Epic Boss Says Fortnite Intended for a “More Casual” Audience

Epic co-founder Tim Sweeny has said that the company's recently announced Fortnite is designed to appeal to a "more casual" audience than its previous titles.

In a new interview with Venture Beat, Sweeny touted Fortnite as part of the publisher's new, more inclusive lineup. "We have announced a new game Fortnite for an entirely different audience, more casual. It appeals to a wider audience than a hardcore game like Gears of War. We are branching out, but we tie it all together with AAA production values."

Though the quote might turn some gamers off to Fortnite, Sweeny's focus seems to be on accessibility and tone, rather than complexity. Though we haven't heard much about the game, we do know that its core mechanic involves building fortresses by day, then defending them from a zombie horde by night. That sounds rather similar to another game that has proven wildly popular among both traditional and casual gamers: Minecraft.

Sweeny also shed light onto how Epic came to work on such a decidedly uncharacteristic game. Apparently, the project has its origins in an "internal game jam" designed to foster ideas for the studio's next AAA project.

"Everybody in the company who was available divided up into teams and spent a week creating prototypes. We got a bunch of different prototypes and proposals out of it, with an incredible amount of variety. Fortnite arose through that process."

Epic has yet to announce when or where we'll be seeing Fortnite, but we expect to hear more about the game at E3 in June.